Brief History of Computers and the Internet

It is almost impossible to determine who the inventor of the computer was. In fact, this may not be the result of one person, but of the contribution of several people through the years.

Let's go back to the year 1936. In 1936, Konrad Zuse invented series of automatic calculators in order to help him with his extremely long engineering calculations. By that time, he was a construction engineer working for the Henschel Aircraft Company in Germany and due to his ingenious and revolutionary invention, he gained the title (although no official) of "inventor of the modern computer". His first mechanical calculator was called Z1 (1936) and it was the first binary computer in history. In 1939, after years of investigation and work, he finally finished an electro-mechanical computer which was called Z2. And by 1941, Zuse finished the computer Z3, the first electronic, programmable computer.

In 1942, John Atansoff and Clifford Berry finished the Atanasoff-Berry Computer in the United States. This computer had many innovations such as a binary system of arithmetic, regenerative memory and a system to separate the memory functions from the computing functions. But this computer was as big as a desk and weighed more than 300 kilos. The speed of calculation was one operation every 15 seconds.

Between 1947 and 1948, a new invention would influence the world of the incipient computers. Until this time, computers used vacuum tubes, but during this period, the transistors were created and became part of the second generation of computers. The invention of the transistor was the result of the investigations of John Bardeen, William Shockley and Walter Brattain and it was such a revolutionary one, that they received the Physics Nobel Prize in 1956.

In 1953, IBM developed the first commercially general purpose computer - IBM's 701 EDPM. This computer was upgraded in 1956, when the model 704 was developed. In 1960 IBM built the first commercial transistorized computer - the IBM 7090, which was at that time the fastest computer on earth.

Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce were two engineers who were working on the same project at the same time without knowing it. They both invented very similar integrated circuits, and realized it when they were given their patents. After many years of disputes and legal battles, they decided that the most intelligent thing to do would be to join forces and work as a team, which they did. Since then, the transistors were replaced by chips and they built a very solid and profitable business, as all modern products use this technology.

In 1969, when the world was living a cold war, the ARPAnet (Advanced Research Projects Agency, who was in charge of developing weapons and systems during the cold war) was designed and started working. This was the predecessor of the Internet that we know today. Its main mission was to create a network of computers that were geographically separated but could maintain communication using a new protocol, in order to protect the incoming and outgoing information between all the military installations.

The first network built around the ARPAnet only had four computers and they were the computer in UCLA, the computer in Stanford Research Institute, the computer in UC Santa Barbara and the one in the University of Utah. But with the expansion of the network also came some problems and in 1982 a much better set of protocols were designed and created in order to solve them. It was the birth of the TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol).

Today, the internet is the most powerful communication tool people have and there is no doubt that it has changed the world completely. It has shortened the distances and now we are able to communicate in real time with people in different continents, access information and do most of our activities online, from shopping to studying or working.